Last week I went on the Big E Sports Show — streamed by Yahoo Sports Radio as well as Sirius Satellite Radio all over the United States — to talk about the NBA playoff picture and coaching carousel. A fun and lively segment, as always.

On another note, a rather meaty feature I wrote for CNN World Sports ran today. The topic: Overweight pro athletes competing at the highest level. Can they do it? How do they do it? Why do they do it? Do fad diets work? What are the pros/cons of dumping carbs altogether (as many top athletes are doing today)?

I weigh in on these topics by asking the experts — including Adebayo “The Beast” Akinfenwa of FC Wimbledon, and South African Rugby international Ollie le Roux (who weighed over 300 pounds in his heyday).

Here’s the intro, and a link to the complete article is at the bottom of the page:

Fat or fit? These ‘obese’ athletes are proud of their extra pounds

By Motez Bishara, CNN

(CNN) For a brief 10-minute spell at LA’s Staples Center earlier this month, one imposing NBA player got busy throwing his weight around — literally.

The man known as “Big Baby” — all 206 centimeters and 131 kilograms of him — contorted his body to sink improbable layups, dive for loose balls, rebound, block shots and turn into an all-around disruptive force for the Clippers in a win-or-go-home victory over the defending champion San Antonio Spurs.

A week later at Tropicana Field in Tampa, a 201 cm, 138 kg behemoth named C.C. Sabathia struck out nine batters in seven innings to clinch a win for the league-leading New York Yankees. The pitcher’s protruding belly shook like a washing machine on fast spin after each pitch.

In an era where top athletes obsess over body fat and favor kale smoothies over traditional pregame pasta, Sabathia and Glen “Big Baby” Davis are two of a handful of professional athletes thriving in spite of their girth.

“People look down on them, because they say they shouldn’t be out there,” Ollie le Roux, a former South Africa rugby international, told CNN. “But the nice thing about the big guy, the fat guy, the guy that doesn’t look athletic, is that when he runs over the little guy that looks like a superstar, it makes it more human.”

“It’s amazing to watch guys like Michael Jordan as well, but you don’t relate to them on a physical level like you do the overweight guy,” adds le Roux, who tipped the scales at 137 kilograms during the 1999 Rugby World Cup.

Over the past two weeks I’ve been assigned to write not one, but two features on the Kentucky Derby for CNN.com. I knew exactly nothing about horse racing, so I had to get up to speed on the sport pretty quickly.

Fortunately, I was able to secure an interview with Ahmed Zayat, an extremely affable gentleman who has three horses entered in the race, a feat that hasn’t been achieved in decades. Even more fortunately, he was Egyptian and happened to also be an alumnus of BU. So we struck up a friendly conversation off the bat and he very kindly granted me an extended interview and helped get me up to speed on the industry.

The next piece was a more ‘inside baseball’ look at horse racing. I’m linking the story to baseball on purpose, because the expression ‘hitting home runs’ was used so often by all the people I spoke to in the industry, that I could have been interviewing the New York Yankees.

In horse racing terms, hitting a home run is investing in a horse that wins big races and becomes a champion stallion. His stud fees (what owners charge other breeders to have his baby horses) can go up to $100k per birth, up to 100 times a year for 20 years. I can hear the sounds of “Cha-Ching!” as I’m typing.

On Wednesday I was tasked to write a story for CNN World Sports on the impending (Pretty Boy) Floyd Mayweather Vs Manny (The Pac Man) Pacquiao fight that’s playing out on social media. Once I scrolled through each of their Instagram accounts, the story pretty much wrote itself. They were hysterically polar opposite in personality and content. The Pac Man evoked his Christian faith at every opportunity, singing songs of Jesus with his wife at home and at church.

Mayweather…. well… it went more like this (Note: I could not include this particular clip in the story, lol):

Last week I phoned in for a regular guest slot on The Big E Sports Show with Elissa Walker Campbell. I love doing these spots, they’re great fun and the questions Elissa asks never fail to bring up perspectives on players and teams that I hadn’t really thought of. That’s the sign of a seasoned interviewer at work.

We waxed lyrical on the MVP race and the NBA playoff picture. The radio segment was split in two for podcast listeners. Here they are:

Meanwhile, last Friday I released an article on CNN with the headline “The $900,000 Monument to England’s Failure” about a giant sculpture by an Italian artist which records every loss the England football team has suffered since 1847. That’s a lot of losses. You can read the article here.

Yesterday I went to Upton Park, West Ham’s fabled grounds opened in 1904 and soon to be cast aside for the Olympic Stadium. I expected something akin to Fenway Park, Boston’s antique and incredibly charming baseball stadium, the smallest in the Major Leagues.

It was charming, but not in a Fenway Park way. More in a rundown left to rot kind of way. Furthermore, I expected a frantic ambiance, with fans chanting for 90 mins straight as a backdrop to the scent of fan violence that could break out at any moment.

This is what happens when you’ve seen the movie Green Street Hooligans (named after the street adjoined to the Boleyn Ground — the official name for Upton Park) too many times. The entire film, an unlikely tale of a Harvard kid who gets mixed up in a West Ham gang can be watched free on HD here. Here’s the trailer:

But enough about films! The game itself was end to end stuff, very exciting. Too bad West Ham can’t score to save their lives, otherwise Chelsea would have left the park as losers. Instead, the Hammers gave up a goal early and missed a ton of chances.

Some geezers put up this well edited HD video taken from the stands. You can hear tons of cursing, chanting of the Hammers theme song “Forever Blowing Bubbles” and lots of bad West Ham football:

Some photos from the grounds:

West ‘Am United. True to it’s East End roots

A small burial site just outside the stadium (by the car park?!) for Hammers die-hards, no pun intended.

With the legendary Dave Dove, a Hammers fan who’s been attending Upton Park since 1958!!

We left in a very orderly fashion, waited for about 25 minutes on a very long line snaking around Upton Park tube station, and went home without incident. Alas, the app was never used.

Hello all, last week I was able to cover the very high-end art auctions at Sotheby’s and Christie’s on a press assignment for Aljazeera.

Pretty heady stuff. There was great buzz in the room, especially on Tuesday night, when the German artists Gerhard Richter broke the record for most expensive living European artists sold at auction ($47 million).

Works by Gerhard Richter, Lucio Fontana, and Cy Twombly were among those that set the pace at the post-war and contemporary art sales hosted by Christie’s and Sotheby’s.

The highest priced lot took place on Tuesday when Richter’s Abstraktes Bildsurprised the packed auction room on Bond Street with aggressive phone bids coming in at 2 million British pound increments ($3.1m).

The final sale price of 30.4 million pounds ($46.8m) established a new auction record by a living European artist.

The anonymous bidder, reported to be an American, was represented by Sotheby’s worldwide co-head of contemporary art, Cheyenne Westphal. I think I can genuinely say it went to someone who truly wanted this painting, and he was set on buying it tonight,” Westphal said, noting Richter also happened to be her favourite artist.

A sister painting of the large abstract work was sold by Eric Clapton in 2012 for a then-record of 21 million pounds ($32m).

The artwork, which measures 3 x 2.5 metres draped with jagged lines of reds and greens, was last sold on auction at Sotheby’s in 1999 for $607,500, generating a return of 32.4 percent annually.

“Richter is not hot all of a sudden, he has always been sought after,” said Arianne Levene Piper, founder of the New Art World consultancy.

“There are plenty of ultra-high net worth collectors who are willing to pay for top works. This explains why a great painting by a great artist will sell for high prices at auction.”

What if the party offered a meet and great with Adriana Lima and Lily Aldridge? Or a chance to hang with rapper Nelly? Or watch Steven Tyler rock out on stage?

This weekend, thousands will be flocking to Arizona to watch the Patriots and Seahawks duke it out in the Super Bowl; thousands of others are there just to party My latest feature for CNN breaks down the annual gold rush known as Super Bowl Weekend:

Super Bowl XLIX: Final quest for the hottest tickets in town

By Motez Bishara, for CNN

Updated 1142 GMT (1942 HKT) January 30, 2015

(CNN)It’s a modern day gold rush.

A trip to Super Bowl XLIX in Phoenix will cost even the most discerning fans thousands of dollars, while providing a hefty windfall for business owners riding one of the biggest consumer spending weekends of the year in the U.S.

Victoria’s Secret models hosting $25,000 tables, shady ticket deals, and risky online trading for Super Bowl seats have become as much a part of the annual celebration of America’s favorite sport as the ceremonial opening coin toss.

With so much at stake, many fans won’t be leaving anything to chance in the race to book luxury hotels, limos, and some of the year’s most lavish parties — not to mention, tickets to the big game itself.

As a result, a throwback solution from pre-Internet days has emerged as a winner: the hospitality package deal.

“It’s a value-add situation,” says Anbritt Stengele, owner of Chicago-based Sports Traveler, who sold out of her few remaining Super Bowl packages last Friday.

On Thursday, I had the pleasure of attending the annual London NBA game on press row. I got to meet one of my boyhood idols, Walt Frazier, for the first time since I was 8, and saw a bevy of celebs courtside (most of the Arsenal and Chelsea players, along with a ton of UK rappers who I’m happy to say I had never heard of).

More to the point, however, I interviewed unfortunate Knicks superfan Dennis Doyle for a CNN feature which filed today. Dennis is following the Knicks around to every single game in their historically putrid season. He’s a great guy, and clearly someone I could relate to, on the basketball barnstorming tip. Here’s the article:

Basketball fan blows $25,000 watching Knicks’ nightmare season

By Motez Bishara

Updated 1736 GMT (0136 HKT) January 19, 2015

(CNN)The greatest sports franchises in the world all share one thing in common: superfans so passionate they will travel far and wide to watch their teams exult in victory.

Dennis Doyle has experienced all of the travel and exactly none of the joy.

When the 32-year-old New York Knicks lifer first drummed up the plan to follow his beloved NBA team at every stop — including London — for an entire season, he had no idea it would be a historic one.

Sadly for him, it was historic for all the wrong reasons.

“This is the worst basketball that I’ve seen this season,” says Doyle, while exiting the O2 Arena after the Knicks were blown out by the Milwaukee Bucks for their 16th loss in a row.

Doyle arrived in London (via Iceland) on Saturday to watch the Knicks as part of the NBA’s Global Games initiative.

“I was hoping they would win close to 40 games, sneak into the playoffs and see what could happen,” he says.

Instead, the Knicks are on course to have their worst season in franchise history with a 5 — 36 record at the halfway mark. The failure is extreme, even for a team that has battled a revolving door of personnel changes and off-court controversy for well over a decade.

Hello all, last week I did another hit for Yahoo! Sports Radio’s Elissa Walker Campbell. We focused on Kobe Bryant passing Michael Jordan on the all-time scorers list, the rebuilding of the Lakers and Knicks, and the bizarre decision by Sacramento Kings owner Vivek Ranadive to fire coach Mike Malone a third of the way into the season.

Here we go with Part Duex. I listed eight shows on the last post, and another 12 here. I’m sure there were a bunch of others (I’m leaving out a Black Star gig where Mos Def and Talib Kweli didn’t show up until 11.30pm, at which point my buddy had to leave), but those are all the stubs I found, or concerts I remembered off the top of my head from the past 12 months, starting with:

Lindi Ortega (The Garage – Paid face £12), Jan 30

Lively, crimson-wearing Canadian Latina playing Nashville music (confusing, I know). Terrific Show. Set the stage nicely for the next night’s gig which was….

Would you believe me if I told you this was one of the most impressive live performances I’ve ever seen? The show was an extravaganza. Dozens of dancers, some on stilts, she was on a trapeze-like contraption for while… Swift can sing, she writes her own songs, she can play multiple instruments, she can dance (ok, maybe not her best skill), and she has awesome stage presence. Why all the haters? The abuse I got for seeing her was surprising.

I’ve also never seen such a powerful dynamic from an audience (90% of whom wer under 16, but hey). Ed Sheeran came on to do a couple of duets, that was very cool. Which inspired me to get tix for…

Ed Sheeran (Royal Albert Hall, paid face £50 ) March 4

This was a charity gig for the Teenage Cancer Trust. Sheeran was introduced by Roger Daltrey and Noel Gallagher as ‘a top lad’ who doesn’t back out of commitments, though he’s one of the most sought-after entertainers in the world right now. He’s effectively a one-man band, and to be metaphorically naked on stage with 20,000 eyeballs staring at you is no easy task. Sheeran basked in it, using effects pedals when necessary, sometimes rapping (he does an outstanding cover of Lil’ Kim’s ‘Lighters Up’), and getting the crowd to either stay quiet or sing along when required.

Highlight was his mate Passenger coming up to duet. Two hipsters with tiny guitars harmonizing at the Albert Hall, check it out:

Look how much the tickets were priced at. Factor in that I flew from London to Puerto Rico (via Miami) to watch these 50-something rockers (ex-new guitarist Josh Klinghoffer, who is 35). They played for just 1.45mins – no encores. LAME.

I wish I got into them when Fruciante was still in the band. They still have great energy, but … something’s missing.